“My Father Hates Me and I Hate Him Too”

“Eve,

Some people become parents but never truly deserve the title. This is perhaps because the generation before us didn’t realize that having a child is a choice, not a duty.

Fortunately, today, people can decide they don’t want to be parents. They aren’t shackled by the weight of continuing the human race or some other outdated notion.

That being said, I believe my father hates me. The good news? I hate him too.

All my life, I tried to be the perfect child, a role I now deeply regret. I never argued or talked back. Instead, I listened, stuck to the curfew, obeyed the rules, and did everything I was told.

What did I get in return? Only heartache and pain.

My mother said she and my father were in love when they married. However, I’ve seen the wedding album, and while their smiles looked fake, the baby bump showing through my mother’s gown was very real.

My grandmother told me my father was a ‘Lagos boy’ who came to visit his aunt in Kafanchan, Kaduna. From there, one thing led to another. He met my mother, and they became friends. Soon after, his visit was over, and he returned to Lagos to continue his life.

For my mother, though, her life would never be the same.

She started falling sick and throwing up, a classic Nigerian film story. She was pregnant. My grandmother was furious, and a lot of drama happened. Ultimately, my father was called back, and few months later, they were married.

My mother stayed in Kafanchan to have the baby (me) before she was supposed to join him in Lagos. But, 26 years later, my mother has never set foot in Lagos. She stayed in Kafanchan while he made occasional trips.

My brother was born a year later, and as I grew up, I came to understand that my father didn’t like me.

Initially, I thought it was because I was a stubborn child, too playful, or had bad grades. I believed that’s why he was always so strict, so quick to raise his voice and his hand.

I’ll never forget the day he beat me so badly, he almost killed me. I was 12, and my mother had asked me to grind beans for our morning moimoi. I took the beans, but got completely lost in a football match with my friends.

Time passed by without me realizing it until the woman who grinded the beans saw me and scolded me in Hausa, “So you haven’t taken this beans home yet? Your mother will beat you when you get back.” I just laughed it off because my mother never hit me.

I finally left the match and hurried home. My father was sitting by the front door, and from his face alone, I could tell he was livid.

“Why are you just coming now? They sent you to go and grind beans since and you went to play.” He threw his shoe at me. I jumped back, and it hit the small paint rubber in my hand. The bean paste spilled onto the sandy ground, and I knew I was in deep trouble.

I knelt down, crying and apologizing, but my father ran inside and returned with his belt. He started to whip me. I screamed and tried to run, but he held me with one hand and whipped me with the other.

My mother came to plead with him to stop, but he threatened to whip her, too, if she interfered. Our neighbors came to beg him when it became too much, but he wouldn’t listen.

I don’t remember much after they arrived. My brother later told me I fainted, that I just went silent and limp. Still, my father kept beating me until Uncle Godiya, who had randomly come to visit, stepped in and snatched the belt away.

Uncle Godiya took me to the clinic. At first, they refused to treat me, assuming I was a thief because of how badly I was beaten and insisted on a police report.

I was in the hospital for two days, my whole body on fire with pain. My father never visited, not once, while my mother cried the entire time she was with me.

We went home on the third day. For the first time, I saw my mother get angry at my father. She had always been meek and quiet. But that day, she yelled at him, telling him never to hit any of her children like that again. They argued and fought, and he left for Lagos in a rage, staying away for the next five months.

After the incident, I asked my mother if he was really my father. She told me never to say that again, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. What kind of father beats their child to the brink of death? I saw the differences in how he treated my brother and me.

He laughed, played, and bought treats with him. It didn’t matter what my brother did; it was never wrong. In contrast, I was always blamed for being the older brother and not stopping him.

I was 15, at a family gathering at my grandmother’s house, when I finally overheard my mother and aunts discussing things. They were urging her to leave my father and regretting that they ever let her marry him.

One of them said in Hausa, “You know you people got married because you were pregnant, and now look how he treats his own son. I wish Mama hadn’t forced you to marry him. So many people get pregnant out of wedlock and raise their kids at home.”

That’s when it hit me. I wasn’t overthinking it. My father truly hated me. He never loved my mother; she was just a temporary village fling for a Lagos big boy. Subsequently, I came along, and the story changed. He was forced into a responsibility he didn’t want. Of course he would resent me; I was the oddity who ruined his plans.

From that moment on, I let go of all expectations. I no longer cared when he yelled at me or when he brought my brother presents and nothing for me. When it was time for my WAEC registration, he claimed he had no money, yet bought my brother a new bicycle and himself a new car.

It was my grandmother who sold some of her farm produce and gave me money for the registration. When my father found out, he was beyond livid.

I got through ABU Zaria with the help of my grandmother, Uncle Godiya, and my mother. My father barely contributed. He wasn’t there for my matriculation or my convocation.

Furthermore, throughout my five years of engineering studies, he never once asked me how school was going. I like to think he was happy when I was away, that he could pretend I never existed.

I’m turning 26 in September. I live in Lagos now, working at an oil and gas company. I’ve seen my father around a couple of times with a woman my mother’s age. Maybe she’s his mistress or his wife here, just as my aunts always suspected. I’ve never told my mother, and I don’t plan to.

I hate my father, and a part of me resents my mother, too, for having me and allowing him to be so cruel. I didn’t ask to be born. All of this was the result of their carelessness.

I try not to resent my brother. It’s not his fault he got a better version of our father. Sometimes, I’m even happy for him. Like me, he didn’t ask to be born.

I wonder if, in ten or thirty years, my father will feel some remorse. He might apologize or try to be close to me. I know I’ll never forgive him, but I still wonder if that will ever happen.”

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